Girls Will Be Boys When Buff Bods Go The Biff

Newcastle Herald

Tuesday June 3, 2008

BLOKE POWER EDDIE O'REILLY

THERE'S been much written in this space over the years about what it is that separates us across the gender divide, but for me it comes down to one thing: balls.

Big, little, soft, hard, oval, round, flat or bouncy, whether you kick them with a boot or hit them with a bat, the fascination with ball sports has, by traditional social stereotype, been a defining bastion of blokedom.

But that's changed a lot, and now it seems that along with the right to vote and drink in a public bar, many women have earned the right to be called blokes, and I'm not quite sure where that leaves me.

You see, it's unmanly, un-blokey and probably even un-Australian to admit it, but I don't get football. Not a bit.

I drink beer, think Jessica Alba is hot, Gilmore Girls is not, and I can change my own car oil. In short, I'm a bloke by any other measure. But when conversation turns to the genius of Joey I nod off.

In my life as a Novocastrian I have attended a grand total of one Knights game. As it happens I was taken by a woman in whom I had developed a more than passing interest.

She was beautiful, warm, intelligent and had a great sense of humour.

She could also it turned out bellow like a bull seal while wearing a beanie and holding a beer in the bleachers at Broadmeadow.

There was a sparkle in her eye whenever the blue and red went over the line matched only by the sparkling spray of invective that glittered gold in the late winter sun whenever her boys let one through.

Anyway, the Knights lost and, coincidentally, I also failed to score, though not unlike the Knights from lack of trying.

I've often wondered how fortunes would have differed had the Knights prevailed, but so passed the high-water mark of my interest in football.

And as we trudged out of the stadium, the limp red and blue streamers trodden into the mud of purple prose, she ranted and raved about the visual acuity of the ref and the freak meteorological processes that created the lucky gust of wind in the dying moments of the second half.

I could only nod demurely and wait for conversation to move on. By the conventional stereotypes she was the bloke and I was acting like a girl, before the advent of girl power.

So, what's my point? Well, like the Knights on that day, I'm not sure if I have one, other than that for me the boundaries of blokedom may no longer be defined by gender alone. If it drinks like a bloke, swears like a bloke and calls ya a big poof for not likin' the footy like a bloke, then go do the math.

Still, we'll always have pig-shooting.

Anyway, the Knights lost and, coincidentally, I also failed to score.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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